It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

And when it comes to broadband, Tokyo is a long way from Little Rock.

The Japanese enjoy broadband speeds that are up to 30 times faster than what’s available here at a far lower cost. This faster, cheaper, universal broadband access – according to an excellent article in today’s Washington Post – “is pushing open doors to Internet innovation that are likely to remain closed for years to come in much of the United States.”

To the Japanese, our “high-speed” Internet service doesn’t look much different from dial-up:

The speed advantage allows the Japanese to watch broadcast-quality, full-screen television over the Internet, an experience that mocks the grainy, wallet-size images Americans endure.

Ultra-high-speed applications are being rolled out for low-cost, high-definition teleconferencing, for telemedicine — which allows urban doctors to diagnose diseases from a distance — and for advanced telecommuting to help Japan meet its goal of doubling the number of people who work from home by 2010.

Open Secrets

What’s the secret of Japan’s success? Open access.

Less than a decade ago, DSL service in Japan was slower and pricier than in the United States. So the Japanese government mandated open access policies that forced the telephone monopoly to share its wires at wholesale rates with new competitors. The result: a broadband explosion.

Not only did DSL get faster and cheaper in Japan, but the new competition actually forced the creaky old phone monopoly to innovate. As the Post explains:

Competition in Japan gave a kick in the pants to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), once a government-controlled enterprise and still Japan’s largest phone company. With the help of government subsidies and tax breaks, NTT launched a nationwide build-out of fiber-optic lines to homes, making the lower-capacity copper wires obsolete.

“Obviously, without the competition, we would not have done all this at this pace,” said Hideki Ohmichi, NTT’s senior manager for public relations.

Made in America

If this quaint idea of “competition” seems familiar, that’s because America invented “open access” policies in the first place. And open access worked for decades to bring lower prices and more choices in long-distance phone service and dial-up Internet access.

The Japanese first adopted open access because they were worried about falling behind us. But under pressure from our own phone and cable monopolists, the Bush administration abandoned open access – and the fundamental protections for Net Neutrality along with it.

Now they’re standing idly by as America drops further and further behind the rest of the world in every measure of broadband progress.

But instead of recognizing their mounting failures and charting a new course (or really, just getting back on the old one), our policymakers prefer to shoot the messenger.

Left Behind

Which bring us to Little Rock.

On Tuesday, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor hosted a public hearing on high-speed Internet access. Rural groups, educators and librarians turned out to decry the lack of broadband service and high-tech opportunities in their communities.

“We have not successfully transitioned into the information age, and I would contend a lot of that is because we’re not delivering broadband to our people,” testified Rex Nelson of the Delta Regional Authority, according to a story in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “Having access to broadband in even the most rural areas of our country is as important as getting that electricity to them and air conditioning to them back in the 1940s and the 1950s.”

Also on hand were FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein — two notable exceptions to the usual inside-the-Beltway blindness on broadband issues. They bemoaned America’s digital decline.

“While some have protested the international broadband penetration rankings,” Adelstein said, alluding to some of his colleagues at the Commission, “the fact is the U.S. has dropped year-after-year. This downward trend and the lack of broadband value illustrate the sobering point that when it comes to giving our citizens affordable access to state-of the-art communications, the U.S. has fallen behind its global competitors.”

Copps called the lack of a national broadband policy “tantamount to playing Russian roulette with our future.”

“Each and every citizen of this great country should have access to the wonders of communications,” Copps said. “I’m not talking about doing all these people some kind of feel-good, do-gooder favor by including them. I’m talking about doing America a favor. I’m talking about making certain our citizens can compete here at home and around the world with those who are already using broadband in all aspects of their lives.”

Bringing the benefits of broadband to all Americans would seem like a no-brainer for any politician. But if the reaction thus far from the White House and the majority at the FCC is any indication, you’d think Copps and Adelstein were speaking in Japanese.

On Tuesday evening, Google CEO Eric Schmidt went before a politely hostile industry audience to map out his company’s vision for a better Internet .

“The Internet has created this remarkable set of free markets, open competition and competitive growth. … We need to keep it free and open,” Schmidt said during a carefully worded speech sponsored by the Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF). “If it goes the other way, we have got a serious problem, because this thing is really phenomenal.”

Schmidt listed four “calls to action” for the future of the Internet:

• Defending freedom of speech;
• Promoting universal broadband access;
• Protecting Net Neutrality; and
• Pushing for government transparency

These four principles are not just critical to a better Internet, Schmidt said, but are the “basic principles” driving the great American experiment.

Net Neutrality Gives Everybody a Choice

“We also care a lot about Net Neutrality,” Schmidt said. “Whether you agree with me or not, you would agree with the following principle: No entity that controls the last mile, whether it’s a telco or a cable company or, by the way, a local government since they’re doing this stuff, too, should be able to control the content that flows over it. Again it’s another important architectural principle to create this dynamic that is so powerful.”

Among the Progress and Freedom Foundation’s corporate sponsors are telephone giants (AT&T and Verizon) cable companies (Comcast and Time Warner); and cell phone companies (T-Mobile and Sprint) who have actively voiced their opposition to open Internet principles.

Together, these entrenched interest pay PFF more than $3 million each year. In exchange the “think tank” promotes positions favoring corporate gatekeepers over Web users, and content “shaping” over the free flow of information. Google also contributes to PFF, though evidently not enough. (Note: SavetheInternet.com takes no corporate money whatsoever.)

Understandably, some on Tuesday bristled at Schmidt’s remarks. Representatives from the Heritage Foundation, Discovery Institute, U.S. Telecom Association, T-Mobile and Verizon stood to challenge Google’s Net Neutrality and Open Access positions.

“Our concern is that any time you have a situation where there is not a choice, you can end up with the wrong outcome,” Schmidt replied. “Let’s be honest and say that the world is a better place when everybody has a choice.”

Regulation for Whom?

One attendee — a member of the Darwin-challenged Discovery Institute — sought to argue that the Internet be completely free of regulation.

The real question isn’t: “Should Congress regulate the Internet?” There always will be regulations. The real question is: “Whom will the regulations benefit?” Without forward-thinking broadband policy and real competition, America’s high-speed Internet services are falling dangerously behind those of other developed nations.

The phone companies represented by many at the PFF event have held Washington’s policy process in their grip for far too long. They are among the most prolific spenders on Washington lobbyists, campaign contributions, PR firms and paid junkets — all with the intent to create special rules that are written in their favor. For all their corrosive talk about “deregulation,” the cable and telephone giants actually lobby for regulations to:

• Protect their market monopolies and duopolies
• Stifle new entrants and technologies in the broadband marketplace
• Increase their control over the content that travels over the Web

PFF claims to ground its work in principles of “limited government, free markets and individual sovereignty.” How then do they justify taking money from corporations — and adopting positions — that have a demonstrably opposite effect?

We’ll leave that question to the likes of Professor Larry Lessig, who plans to devote the next decade to investigating the corruption of our democracy by moneyed interests.

Free Choice v. Telco Control

What’s clear is that the phone company scheme to inject gatekeepers and toll booths into the Internet marks a fundamental shift in the neutral way the Internet has always worked.

We caught a glimpse of this earlier this month when AT&T censored Pearl Jam and other bands that didn’t quite meet their standard of “Internet freedom.” AT&T and Verizon’s whole business model has been built upon a type of content control that’s anathema to the free flowing Internet. They stand in opposition to efforts to empower people to make their own decisions and to protect their privacy in doing so.

Such gatekeeping takes away the most basic and crucial tenet of the Internet — our freedom to connect online to a Web site of our choosing. It also tips the Web’s even playing field to favor larger corporations, while handicapping the Internet’s true innovators: outsiders and startups who can’t afford to buy in to the network provider’s protection racket.

There are many valid concerns about Google’s own ambitions for the Internet. But the search giant seems to be standing up for the basic freedoms that have made the Internet a great engine for free speech, economic innovation and social change.

We wish we could say the same for the phone companies and other special interests that float coin-operated think tanks like the Progress and Freedom Foundation.

AT&T’s culture of control has taken a frightening new turn.

Some may remember when the company’s black rotary phone was the only device allowed on its telephone network. Today, the communications giant is banking that a world without Net Neutrality will allow them to exert similar control over another network — the free flowing Internet.

AT&T’s Vision for the Future of the Internet

Look no further than AT&T’s recent censorship of a Pearl Jam concert webcast, just as lead singer Eddie Vedder launched into a critique of President Bush.

AT&T’s slippery response to the resulting outcry is instructive.

Spinning Out of Control

The moment the Pearl Jam news hit the Web, AT&T’s public relations division scrambled their spokespeople and shills. In a frenzy of damage control, they fired off a series of statements. One called the move “totally against our policy — of never, ever censoring political speech.” Another declared the Pearl Jam censorship “an isolated incident” — an “unfortunate” mistake by a rogue subcontractor.

But it wasn’t long before evidence came to light of more political censorship at the hands of AT&T — involving earlier webcasts of bands like the Flaming Lips, John Butler Trio and others. (The list keeps growing)

AT&T redeployed its hacks with a “modified” public position:

“It’s not our intent to edit political comments in webcasts,” said AT&T spokeswoman Tiffany O’Brien Nels. “Unfortunately, it has happened in the past in a handful of cases. We have taken steps to insure that it will not happen again.”

Then on Monday a crew member involved with AT&T’s webcasts came forward, telling Wired News that he had been issued instructions to “shut it down if there was any swearing or if anybody starts getting political.”

Sounds like a censorship policy to us.

Doublespeak

So AT&T’s shills shifted gears once again. AT&T screwed up for sure, they admit, but this censorship of political speech “has absolutely nothing to do with Net Neutrality. Nothing. Zero. Zilch.”

Why should we take AT&T at their word?

Such spin needs to be held up to scrutiny. AT&T’s past is checkered with stories of breaking trust with customers — helping the NSA wiretap calls and handing over private phone records to the government, promising to deliver services to underserved communities and then skipping town, pledging never to interfere with the free flow of information online while hatching plans with the likes of Cisco, Viacom, RIAA and MPA to build and deploy technology that will spy on user traffic.

When faced with a simple Net Neutrality rule that would keep them honest, AT&T rails against the move as a “solution in search of a problem.”

They pledge “never, ever” to interfere with the free flow of information online, while touting plans to become gatekeepers to the Web — with content “shaping” technology and discriminatory business practices that would upend the level playing field that has made the Internet an engine of free speech and economic innovation.

AT&T is the ‘Problem’

“This is precisely the behavior … Net Neutrality advocates have been warning about for almost a decade,” Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig wrote about the Pearl Jam incident. “And not just (or even most importantly) in this explicit form. Much more important are the games played more subtly, to push innovation and content in the direction that benefits AT&T.”

Internet Service Providers “believe they have the absolute right to control the content/application on those lines,” Lessig writes. If allowed to proliferate, this attitude “will be deadly for Internet innovation.”

AT&T’s censorship, whether a “mistake” or corporate policy, is a rallying point for the Internet freedom movement. The great promise of the Internet shouldn’t be left in the hands of those who confuse telling the truth with spinning for political and economic gain.

But AT&T can still make good on its promise to “never, ever” censor the Web by backing off its multimillion-dollar campaign to kill Net Neutrality.

How about it?

Over the weekend AT&T gave us a glimpse of their plans for the Web when they censored a Pearl Jam performance that didn’t meet their standard of “Internet freedom.”

During the live Lollapalooza Webcast of a concert by the Seattle-based super-group, the telco giant muted lead singer Eddie Vedder just as he launched into a lyric against President George Bush. The lines — “George Bush, leave this world alone” and “George Bush find yourself another home” were somehow lost in the mix.

“What happened to us this weekend was a wake up call, and it’s about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band,” Pearl Jam band members stated in a release following the incident.

Indeed. AT&T routinely rails against Net Neutrality as a “solution without a problem.” They say Net Neutrality regulations aren’t necessary because they wouldn’t dare interfere with online content. At the same time they tout plans to become gatekeepers to the Web with public relations bromides about “shaping” Web traffic to better serve the needs of an evolving Internet.

Such spin needs to be held up to the light of experience. AT&T’s history of breaking trust with their customers includes handing over private phone records to the government, promising to deliver services to underserved communities and then skipping town, pledging never to interfere with the free flow of information online while hatching plans with the likes of Cisco, Viacom, RIAA and MPA to build and deploy technology that will spy on user traffic.

The moral of this story is never trust AT&T at their word. The company acts in bad faith toward the public interest and will do whatever it can get away with to pad it’s bottom line — including sacrificing the freedoms its users have to choose where they go, what they watch and whom they listen to online.

Our friends at the Future of Music Coalition have done great work to mobilize hundreds of rock bands against such censorship but it’s a threat that concerns everyone.

AT&T’s vision of a better Internet – “Your World Delivered” — is not one that is shared by the more than 1.5 million people who have spoken out in favor of a neutral, affordable and accessible Internet for everyone. For us the Internet isn’t about one company delivering our world. It’s about simply offering a high-speed connection at reasonable rates — and then getting out of our way.

Too often in the give and take of media policymaking it’s government officials that are giving, corporate giants that are taking, and the public that’s left with little in the exchange.

This was the case yesterday as the Federal Communications Commission decided to sell off licenses to an invaluable chunk of public airwaves with few conditions to ensure that Americans gain from the deal.

FCC Commissioners

The spectrum in question — the 700 MHz band – will be returned to Americans after TV broadcasters shift from an analog (and spectrum hogging) format to a more compressed digital signal.

Closing the Gap

These airwaves represent our last best chance to connect tens of millions of Americans to an open and affordable Internet. They can carry a wireless Internet signal through concrete buildings and over mountains – a signal that can single-handedly close the digital divide for people in both rural and urban America, who are now being bypassed by the likes of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.

With the agency’s decision, however, it’s more likely that this same phone and cable cartel will use their political and financial muscle to further consolidate its control over wireless Internet access in the country. The same companies already dictate “wired” broadband access for more than 96% of residential users.

These politically-connected corporations don’t see this new spectrum as a chance to blow open the marketplace. They see it as a threat to the status quo — an Internet business model where they dole out access at higher prices for slower speeds compared to services in many Western European and Asian countries.

The FCC had the opportunity to change this. Had the agency attached conditions to open the 700 MHz band, they would have unleashed the creative forces of the marketplace onto an Internet that is now suffocating under the weight of the providers.

More than a quarter-million citizens filed comments to the FCC urging the agency to inject such broadband competition into the marketplace by creating a so-called “third pipe,” a national wireless Internet network to compete head-to-head with DSL and cable.

A proposal put before the agency by public advocates, consumer organizations and technology companies would have helped make this “third pipe” a reality. Their solution: create one nationwide wireless Internet license that would be offered to new competitors on a wholesale basis – a model known as “open access” that has proven immensely successful for European nations.

Repercussions from a Bad Decision

In America, open access would pry open the market to new businesses, start ups, entrepreneurs and providers, spurring competition and innovation while driving down costs to the consumer. It would be a boon for the mobile Internet, at a time when a flurry of new devices such as the iPhone are coming available to users.

Instead the FCC chose a course that will keep us behind the pace of countries that have embraced open networks.

Our last, best chance to propel us into an era of Internet innovation and creativity was squandered by an agency that too often confuses corporate welfare with public service.

The FCC decision should be a call to arms for consumer advocates, public interest groups, Internet entrepreneurs and concerned citizens across the country. Unless we amplify calls for true open access, the repercussions of this sell off of the airwaves will be felt for generations to come.